The Global Authoritarian Wave, Democratic Countercurrents and Dangerous Crosscurrents

Luis Martínez-Fernández
Fri, 09 Dec 2022 21:00:00 -0800
Opinion

When it comes to the preservation of democracy, I can sound like a broken record. Democracy is very fragile; it must be protected, I tell my students and anyone willing to listen.

The erosion of democracy and the urgency of protecting it are, in fact, recurring topics in my weekly columns, a collection of which will be published later this month under the title "When the World Turned Upside Down: Politics, Culture, and the Unimaginable Events of 2019-2022."

While in the past 15 years, the global trend has pointed toward increasingly authoritarian and undemocratic rule (China, Russia, Belarus, Cuba, Venezuela, Myanmar, etc.), in the past two years, the world has witnessed some encouraging countercurrents, pendular swings toward democracy in the United States, Western Europe, Poland, Hungary and Brazil, to name only a few cases.
Updated: Sat Dec 10, 2022

When it comes to the preservation of democracy, I can sound like a broken record. Democracy is very fragile; it must be protected, I tell my students and anyone willing to listen.

The erosion of democracy and the urgency of protecting it are, in fact, recurring topics in my weekly columns, a collection of which will be published later this month under the title "When the World Turned Upside Down: Politics, Culture, and the Unimaginable Events of 2019-2022."

While in the past 15 years, the global trend has pointed toward increasingly authoritarian and undemocratic rule (China, Russia, Belarus, Cuba, Venezuela, Myanmar, etc.), in the past two years, the world has witnessed some encouraging countercurrents, pendular swings toward democracy in the United States, Western Europe, Poland, Hungary and Brazil, to name only a few cases.

But undemocratic crosscurrents persist. In the past week alone, former President Donald Trump issued a disturbing message calling for the "termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution," to redress the "massive fraud" he claims robbed him of reelection.

Even more bizarre were this week's revelations of a thwarted right-wing, QAnon-connected plot to overthrow the German government and replace it with an obscure minor aristocrat.

Also this week, Peru's democratically elected left-of-center president, Pedro Castillo, was impeached, arrested and removed from office, following his failed attempt to overstep his constitutional powers and dissolve the Congress and impose a new constitution, which would have been the nation's 14th since its independence.

LINGERING TRUMPISM

Nearly two years into Trump's antidemocratic administration, the American electorate expressed its repudiation in the 2018 midterm elections, giving Democrats control over the House of Representatives with a net gain of 41 seats and 7 new governorships; and in November 2020, voted him out of office. The anti-authoritarian countercurrent's latest manifestations were the recent midterm electoral defeats of Trump-endorsed, election-denial candidates, including Mehmet Oz, Herschel Walker and four other senatorial candidates; and Doug Mastriano, Kari Lake and nine other MAGA gubernatorial candidates.

While Trump appears to have lost all chances of becoming the Republican Party's 2024 presidential nominee, the anti-ideological ideology of Trumpism still dominates the party and he retains enormous loyalty and popularity among the party's base. This authoritarian crosscurrent is bound to survive Trump's political, and perhaps his biological life.

GERMAN PUTSCHISM THEN AND NOW

Not that long ago, Germany epitomized fascism, the worst manifestation of Western dictatorial rule and expansionism ever. The ambitious and temporarily successful Third Reich, however, had humble roots in a 1923 failed putsch in the unlikely stage of a Munich beer hall, where Hitler and his Nazi confederates tried to seize power by force. Hitler was tried and sentenced to five years in prison but not 10 years had passed before he was named German chancellor. The rest of the story needs no recounting.

There is some irony in the fact that what had been Europe's most horrific and destructive dictatorial nation has become the continent's most solid democratic bastion.

Authoritarian putschism has, however, reared its ugly head as evidenced by Wednesday's arrest of 25 plotters belonging to the heavily armed right-wing organization Reichsburger (Reich citizens) which was seeking to install a lower aristocrat, Prince Heinrich XIII, as German leader. In August of 2020, members of the Reichsburger group attempted to storm the German Parliament building to seize control (Jan. 6-style), some responding to QAnon rumors that none other than Donald Trump had traveled to Berlin to liberate the German people. I can almost hear the Wagnerian score to this opera of the absurd.

PERUVIAN PRESIDENTS (Six in as many years)

After leaving dictatorial Cuba in the summer of 1962, my family resettled in Peru, where Army General Ricardo Perez Godoy had just staged a coup d'etat installing himself as the nation's 47th president. Six years later, another coup — the 12th in Peru's history — removed president No. 49.

In 1992, President Alberto Fujimori staged a coup against/and in his own favor, imposed a new constitution and ruled with an iron fist until 2000. In the last 22 years, Peru has had 20 different presidents (six since 2016). Of the eight living former presidents, all but one have either been arrested or convicted of serious crimes or have been impeached (two of them twice). Another one killed himself in anticipation of his arrest for corruption charges. Talk about "candidate quality."

One of the legacies of the 1993 Fujimori constitution is the ease with which presidents can dissolve the national congress and the ease with which Congress can impeach presidents. Fujimori dissolved Congress in 1993, and Martin Vizcarra did the same in 2019. Congress impeached Fujimori in 2000 on grounds of "permanent moral incapacity," then unsuccessfully impeached Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (2017), and Vizcarra twice in 2020, successfully on the second try.

This past week, Peru lived through constitutional warfare: anticipating a third set of impeachment proceedings against him, Pedro Castillo moved to dissolve Congress on Dec. 7, he was impeached and arrested by the National Police.

Democracy is, indeed, fragile, in countries where it has been historically weak, in places still recovering from authoritarian rule and in its long-term bastions. Watch for those dangerous crosscurrents.